CLIMATE change sceptics need to accept the "reality" of man's influence on the weather, Nick Clegg said today as he joined an attack on his Tory coalition partners.

This type of climate change denying conservatism is wilfully ignorant, head in the sand, nimby-ist conservatism.

Ed Davey

The Deputy Prime Minister is backing a speech due to be made by Energy Secretary Ed Davey today, in which he he will accuse critics of Government policy on climate change of a "wilfully ignorant, head in the sand, nimby-ist conservatism".

Mr Clegg said the comments were not aimed at the Prime Minister, who last month told the Commons he suspected the recent "abnormal weather events" - including the floods - were linked to climate change.

Speaking on LBC Radio this morning, Mr Clegg said: "It's not a secret that in the Conservative Party you have a fair number of people who just don't accept the reality of climate change.

Asked if he felt Mr Cameron was among those undermining efforts to counter global warming, Mr Clegg replied: "Actually I think he himself has said that he thinks these very violent and volatile weather patterns are linked in some shape or form to climate change, but as you know there are prominent Conservatives - Lord Lawson and a lot of other Conservatives - who just don't accept it."

He said climate change sceptics were entitled to say the evidence presented by an international panel of scientists, as well as the Government's chief scientific officer, was "baloney", but he added: "At a certain point you've just got to say, 'Come on, how many more times do you need to be told by people who know what they are talking about that this is happening and we've got to do something about it?'."

Mr Davey is due to make a speech today to the Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank, in which he will argue attempts by some Tories - combined with the Ukip - to discredit the scientific evidence of climate change threaten a breakdown of the political consensus on the issue.

He will say that such attitudes combined with the entrenched Euroscepticism of some Conservatives is creating a "diabolical cocktail" which could undermine efforts to achieve international agreement on a way forward.

"I fear that on climate change and energy policy, political consensus is in danger of breaking down," he is expected to say.

"From the right, fringes of the Conservative Party and Ukip are parroting the arguments of the most discredited climate change deniers, seizing on any anomaly in the climate data to attempt to discredit the whole.

"This is undermining public trust in the scientific evidence for climate change overwhelming though it is.

"This type of climate change denying conservatism is wilfully ignorant, head in the sand, nimby-ist conservatism.

"And when married to the Europhobia innate to parts of the Conservative party, you have a diabolical cocktail that threatens the whole long-term structure of UK climate change and energy policy.

"If you accept the logic of climate change, you have to accept the logic of European co-operation to tackle it. Because we can only remain competitive, be energy secure, and tackle emissions by acting together with our major trading bloc - our neighbours - our partners.

David Cameron has linked the recent flooding to climate change [REUTERS]

Climate change sceptic Lord Lawson - a former Tory chancellor under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s - told BBC Radio 4's Today programme this morning that scientists were "pretending they know" about climate change.

He said there had been no "measured" warming over the past "50, 60, 70 years", and there had been fewer extreme tropical storms this year.

Britain should concentrate on becoming "resilient and robust to whatever nature throws at us" rather than "littering the countryside" with wind turbines and solar panels.

"I think we want to focus not on this extremely speculative and uncertain area," Lord Lawson said.

"I don't blame the climate scientists for not knowing. Climate and weather is quite extraordinarily complex and this is a very new form of science.

"All I blame them for is pretending they know when they don't.

"We need to abandon this crazy and costly policy of spending untold millions on littering the countryside with useless wind turbines and solar panels, and moving from a sensible energy policy of having cheaper reliable forms of energy to a policy of having unreliable and costly energy."